#18
Sam Pittman — Arkansas, December 2019
Arkansas 2020–The Georgia OL coach whose third year (9-4) gave Arkansas its first ranked finish since 2011 — and the stability the Bret Bielema era hadn't produced.
Year-2: 9-4 · Year-3: 7-6 · stable mid-tier SEC
Pittman's December 2019 hire was the recruiting-coordinator-as-head-coach experiment that the Bielema-Morris collapse necessitated. Year one was COVID-shortened (3-7); year two (9-4 with the Outback Bowl win, the program's first ranked finish since 2011) was the validation; subsequent years have stabilized in the 7-6 to 9-4 band. The hire's place on this list reads as a successful mid-tier-SEC bet rather than a transformational one — the floor was raised, the ceiling has not been tested.
Cohort divergence
Stat-folks rank
#20
Casual-fans rank
#20
Read
consensus
Year-over-year
Prior edition rank: — · Movement: ↑ NEW